We’re hiring for testers in our Quality Assurance department! We tend to favor candidates with programming experience but most importantly, we want people who are fans of our games.Why would you want to work in our QA dept? I’ll give you two reasons.1. We use our QA testers as interns throughout the year. These interns are typically among our top testers, and they sit with the development team, attend meetings, and work on our games directly. So if you kick major ass as a tester here, there is a good chance you’ll be a candidate for one of those intern slots.

2. When we have a job opening on the development team, we look internally first to fill them, so our QA dept gets an inside advantage.

2007 marked the release of the official expansion pack, Shivering Isles, Fighter’s Stronghold, and the worldwide release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year. Since Xbox Live was announced, we’ve released downloadable content in ways no other Xbox 360 games have.

Fun Fact: 2% of Oblivion players have successfully earned all the achievements, including Shivering Isles**.

Awhile back, one of our forum members, James Egger (Egger3rd), contacted me about his series of Orc-Blivion videos he’s created using Oblivion and the CS. Originally intended as a project he did for school, it’s grown to have quite a following on YouTube.

Until recently, I only had a chance to watch the first video, but the other day I watched the other four episodes (word is episode six is in the works). There’s really no good way to describe them, but they definitely put a smile on my face. I particularly enjoy the camera cuts used, the music (there’s a few montage moments), and the fact that the videos integrate memorable areas/characters/moments from Oblivion. Also, it helps that I’m a sucker for cheeseball music like Phil Collins (sorry if I’m offending anyone by calling Phil Collins a cheeseball).

Check it out. If you enjoy Orc-Blivion, you might also want to check out RaditzTheRadish’s Argonian series and LordofCorruption’s Bargonian Adventures. You can find all three within this thread in our Oblivion forums.

We wanted to do a quick shout out for Michael Gordon Shapiro, who composed the music for our latest Star Trek title, Conquest. Right now on his homepage, you can check out a 60 second sample of the “Main Title Theme” and “Menu Music” found within the game. In addition to his contributions on Conquest, Shapiro has also done work for other game studios, including Vivendi and Valve.

For more information about Star Trek: Conquest, head on over to the official site.

Major Nelson reported Oblivion is #7 on the list of top Xbox Live games of 2007. For 2006, Oblivion was #5 on the list. Amazingly, we are the sole single player game in the list. Thanks to all our fans out there who continue to give Oblivion life.

The holidays have come and gone. Farewell egg nog, holiday parties, and wonderful time off. So what do folks have to look forward to now? Well, since the Redskins had a strong finish, plenty of folks around the office are jacked up for this weekend’s matchup against the Seahawks. Other than that, well…the weekend is always a good time to catch up with the latest games we’re playing…

The folks at Oblivion Real Estate put out their most recent newsletter highlighting some things from around the community including the winners of The MORE Homes Challenge, their official holiday mod, and the always-entertaining PrincessStomper interviewing designer Erik J. Caponi and artist Megan Sawyer.

The interview covers a number of things related to what Erik and Megan do for a living, as well as their interests and whatnot and is quite lengthy and entertaining read, particularly the part about Erik being strikingly handsome. I could get maybe “looks like he could be the lead singer in a band at any given moment,” but strikingly handsome? If you were at a party with him and told someone he was in Queens of the Stone Age, they’d totally believe you.

Oblivion and Morrowind might be getting older, but we continue to see great new mods for both titles. Here’s some highlights from within the mod community over the past few weeks.

Up first is an oldie (but a goodie) that Gary Noonan, one of our character animators, wanted me to highlight. It’s Timeslip’s Morrowind Graphics Extender mod. Here’s what Gary had to say:

“I toyed around with this earlier after finding it last night and it’s pretty amazing. Certainly prolongs the life of Morrowind (that’s right, NOT Oblivion). It’s an extremely small and easy to use use utility that makes Morrowind look like it was a recently released title.”

In more recent mod news, we’d like to give a shout out the December Hall of Fame inductees over at Planet Elder Scrolls. For those that wonder what it takes to get a Hall of Fame entry on the site, the mod must receive at least 25 votes with a score of 8 or better while being downloaded at least 5000 times. For December, the following mods met the criteria:

Finally, in some light-hearted modding news, I couldn’t help but smile when I saw theoutcrowd’s Oblivion mod that creates a character reminiscent of Xena: Warrior Princess. Check out the download here or fear the wrath of Xena!

Some of our best developers working here came from our modding community. They step into their jobs already understanding our tools, processes and pipelines.

So your first step (or one of many possible first steps!) to breaking into the game industry is to make mods. We’re not the only developers who release tools for their games, but assuming you want to make big crazy RPGs like we do, you’re best bet is making mods for our games.

If you are thinking of trying your hand at making mods for Oblivion (or Morrowind), now is a good a time as any. Why? Since Oblivion shipped over a year ago, an enormous amount of documentation, tools and mods have sprung forth along with an amazing modding community to help you learn.